Product News: Labvantage 6 New and Improved LIMS

23 Jan 2012

Labvantage has announced the release of LABVANTAGE 6. Loaded with new features including enhancements to batch management, new event-driven flexibility, advanced instrument integration, and support for both desktop and mobile devices, LABVANTAGE 6 is the culmination of SQL*LIMS, which was acquired from Life Technologies Corporation in 2009, and the legacy LABVANTAGE product lines.

“LABVANTAGE 6 is the result of a unique development project that leveraged decades of diverse laboratory knowledge and experience across many industries,” revealed Jeff Ferguson, LABVANTAGE Chief Executive Officer. “It is not just a marriage of two of the best LIMS in the industry; it is the application of today’s technology to the accumulated requirements of the past two and a half decades.”

The new LABVANTAGE 6 enables organizations to focus on their business while minimizing complexities. Features such as the Navigator, a powerful SQL*LIMS feature now present in LABVANTAGE 6, introduces flexible and dynamic drill down on hierarchical data. For example, combining the LABVANTAGE Viewer with improved batch and genealogy management, identifying root cause and affected batches becomes easier than ever. In addition, LABVANTAGE 6 now provides dynamic field creation, which simplifies the storage of ad-hoc data that may be captured during testing.

LABVANTAGE 6 facilitates LIMS administration and management tasks. LIMS administrators can now maintain system permissions in collections that allow users to dynamically change their role assignments and data filtering. LABVANTAGE 6 streamlines workflow through event-driven alerts and actions by empowering administrators to build conditional logic without using computer code.

This new version continues the paper paradigm to the electronic laboratory notebook (ELN). Using the LABVANTAGE eForms technology, worksheets, laboratory notebook pages, printed instrumentation logs, and questionnaires are all transformed into an electronic format with a look and feel just as familiar as their paper counterparts. The intuitive interface significantly curtails the learning curve required for adopting new software, enabling easier and faster transformation of laboratory data to the paperless environment.

“We engaged customers of both LABVANTAGE and SQL*LIMS product lines since the initial stage of LABVANTAGE 6 development and conducted a thorough gap analysis,” states David Ciabattoni, Sr. Director of Software Development. “That analysis helped us to prioritize the new features, which were then provided to customers as part of our Early Access program.”

“I’m looking forward to the SQL*LIMS implementation community experiencing the power of the LABVANTAGE Web Page Designer, which can quickly add and modify end-user pages without requiring complex development tools like Oracle Forms,” states Ciabattoni. Ralph Goldberg, R&D Product Manager continues, “For the existing LABVANTAGE customer base, the capabilities added in LABVANTAGE 6 truly complement the features requested by our community over the years.”

Other new LABVANTAGE 6 features include the ability to integrate with Waters Empower systems for a seamless exchange of sample lists and LIMS results. The enhanced toolbar and dynamic search capability with auto-complete improve the user experience. And, with full support for convenient tablet computers and other mobile devices, LABVANTAGE 6 is simultaneously equipped for single-site laboratories, global deployments, and enterprise systems with extended partner organizations.